In terms of language, leaping is the ability to associate fast. In a great poem, the considerable distance between associations, that is, the distance the spark has to leap, gives the lines their bottomless feeling, their space, and the speed (of association) increases the excitement of the poetry.
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We often feel elation when reading Homer, Neruda, Dickinson, Vallejo, and Blake because the poet is following some arc of association that corresponds to the inner life of objects he or she speaks of, for example, the association between lids of eyes and the bark of stones [de Nerval’s poem "Golden Lines"]. The associative paths are not private to the poet, but are somehow inherent in the universe.
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The poet who is “leaping” makes a jump from an object soaked in conscious psychic substance to an object soaked in latent or instinctive psychic substance. One real joy of poetry—not the only one—is to experience this leaping inside a poem.
—Robert Bly, “Looking for Dragon Smoke,” American Poetry: Wildness and Domesticity (Harper & Row, 1990)
Showing posts with label leap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leap. Show all posts
12.22.2021
bottomless feeling
Labels:
association,
leap,
leaping poetry,
objects,
robert bly,
space,
spark,
speed
11.19.2018
right kind of wrong
A poem that was the right kind of wrong, making its missteps due to its leaps or when getting to close to an edge.
7.18.2014
mind the gap
Recall that audio admonishment inside the London Underground, ‘Mind the gap’: A metaphor’s power is ‘the gap’; and the mind must leap that gap.
7.11.2010
poetic leap
The poet must not cross an interval with a step when he can cross it with a leap.
—Joseph Joubert, Joubert: A Selection from His Thoughts, trans. by Katharine Lyttelton, quoted in The World in a Phrase (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005) by James Geary
—Joseph Joubert, Joubert: A Selection from His Thoughts, trans. by Katharine Lyttelton, quoted in The World in a Phrase (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005) by James Geary
Labels:
interval,
joseph joubert,
leap,
step
7.28.2008
leap or fall
There is something in art that can’t be taught: What can be taught is an approach, an address or a stance, a way of being available to what might come next. But in all art, after that, it’s the leap, or the fall, and those events can only be experienced.
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